Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Projection room layout

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Posted by Gary Davidson (Member # 2198) on 09-20-2005, 04:43 PM:

I was recently in the projection room of a 10-plex in the LA area. The projection room was one massive corridor with all the projectors lined up on either side. How common is this layout?

Gary

Posted by Aaron Mehocic (Member # 15) on 09-20-2005, 06:01 PM:

Its quite common to have back-to-back machines in the same room. Many of the booths I've seen are of the design you explain. One of my more favorite booths was the old Maxi-Saver Cinema in West Mifflin, PA. However, since Carmike bought them, I don't know if thats still their name. Both Cinemark theatres in the Youngstown, OH area also have the corridor, but I wouldn't call it "massive".

Edit:
Also, Waterworks Cinema in Fox Chapel, PA is of the same design as the Maxi-Savers. I forgot about them. Used to be a great place to see a film in the northern Pittsburgh market. Haven't heard from anybody in that neck of the woods recently so I'm not sure about current presentation quality as of this posting. Perhaps if Jarryd Beard is lurking out there he can catch us up to speed on things.

Posted by Edwin Schwing (Member # 1270) on 09-20-2005, 10:32 PM:

Mine are that way. (one massive corridor)

7 facing north, 9 facing south.

It is a bitch to run from #3 to #12 (a block and a half apart from each other) to start a movie at the same start time! (of course I make sure that never happens....)

E

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 09-20-2005, 10:36 PM:

It's sure nice to be able to see and hear (if they're not too far away) every machine in the building though.

It's my favourite booth layout -- as long as the projectionists workstation/desk is in the middle of the booth, not at one end in some other room.

Posted by Dick Vaughan (Member # 540) on 09-21-2005, 01:03 AM:

One of the early Cineplex Odeon theatres,now UCI I think ,at Solihull in the UK had this layout back in the late 80's. There was enough room for a pool table in the centre.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 09-21-2005, 01:46 AM:

quote: Dick Vaughan
There was enough room for a pool table in the centre.

Extremely funny that you should mention that. [Wink]

Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 09-21-2005, 07:56 AM:

My theatre is a Litchfield design. "L" shaped, originally. Four projectors on the left side down one long hallway, and the 5th on a short hallway to the right. Two more theatres were added in the 1980's, and now I run down the short hallway, around machine #5, and up a ramp, go to the left, then the right, and access machines 6, and 7. No decent air conditioning in this wing. Designers didn't include it. We are trying to get air in there now. I run alot during the day.

I could install a pool table where the two hallways converge. Hmmm...

Posted by Brandon Willis (Member # 2345) on 09-22-2005, 10:53 PM:

This is a dumb question, but is the booth shaped like an "L" for Litchfield? There's a couple of former Litchfields around here, one of which is closed, but I'm not that familiar with the layouts of the buildings.

Our booth is shaped kind of like a lopsided "H". #1-5 and 13-20 is on one side with a corridor connecting this section to a hallway where 8,9, and 10 are. 6,7,11, and 12 are along this connecting corridor.

Posted by David Yauch (Member # 2754) on 09-23-2005, 02:26 AM:

The theatre I am now at is designed like a square, but there are only projectors on 3 sides(or at least I think, I only spent a little while in the booth). The last theatre was a perfect H. There were 2 booths, each of which was one of the long arms of the H, the middle of the H was where the managers offices, supply closets, and the like were located. Each of booths were just a long corridor, and the projectionist's desk was towards the middle of the corridor, you could hear every projector from the desk.

Posted by Joshua Waaland (Member # 287) on 09-29-2005, 07:10 AM:

The first two I worked at, Carmike and Cinemark Tinseltown, were both in a long rectangular room configuration. The second Cinemark I worked at was in the shape of a U. Was hard to know what was going on at one end when you were at the other. We didn't have any of those nice status monitors either. That would have made it nicer.

Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 09-29-2005, 07:41 AM:

My own experience has been that the projection room layout is simply what's left over after several other conditions are satisfied. Things like the size of the property, (excluding parking, public areas) etc., how many auditoriums desired, and zoning requirements. The building design must have wide enough hallways, exits in certain locations (with passages out to the street) rooms of certain size and locations just for electrical, gas, water and/or sprinklers. Many owners want to 'impress' patrons by having a high ceiling in the lobby; that removes alot of projection room space.

Posted by Richard Fowler (Member # 893) on 09-29-2005, 09:37 AM:

One client, who owned all his buildings, would steal as much as possible from the booth so it would become space for second floor office rental for 400% more revenue [Roll Eyes]

One location he figured too tight, against my advisement....two projectionists where hired ( brothers )....who weighed 275 pounds and they could not clear the platters and the rear wall [Razz]

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 09-29-2005, 01:26 PM:

Code requirement is 36" around projection equipment and between it and the wall.

Thank God for wide aisleways downstairs; this usually means at least some depth for the booth above.

I have customers like that, too, Richard.

Louis

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 09-29-2005, 02:01 PM:

quote: Louis Bornwasser
Code requirement is 36" around projection equipment and between it and the wall.

Hmm, aside from IMAX I don't recall ever seeing someone place their projector 3' from the port window.

Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 09-29-2005, 11:26 PM:

This is the layout when there are back to back cinemas on a common hallwy, the booth is directly above the hallway and the same size. usually the hall is pretty wide to allow some lineup area for the individual cinemas, sometimes it is pretty narrow. I've seen booths that were wide enough for a projection package on one side, but some design screwup put two directly opposite and left very little room to pass between the backs of the consoles.
What I really can't understand is when there's a 15 foot wide booth about a hundred yards long with all the projectors on 24" risers that make working on them a terrific pain in the butt. Just raise the floor 2 feet! The hallway has a suspended tile ceiling anyway, it couldn't cost much (if any) more to put the booth floor where it belongs. Naturally the risers are just a few inches bigger than the console bases so "height challenged" operators get to stand on milk crates or ratty stepstools to work...

Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 09-30-2005, 07:46 AM:

Dave- I see your reasoning about simply raising the floor, but -sometimes- there are reasons why it would cost more. For example, if the projection room (PR) floor is raised, the PR ceiling has to go up -which means the roof has to go up. Sometimes, there's not much room between the PR suspended ceiling and the roof to clear AC ducts. At one job I worked on, the architect told me raising the roof costs $7500 per foot (of course that varies per size.) How high up stadium seating runs affects where the PR floor is. Zoning may not allow a building to be higher than some set height.

Although, I've never seen where all projectors were raised in a PR; just where the large auditouriums were. If you have a place like that, and there's plenty of room above the PR suspended ceiling, then I'd agree that an architect was lazy or screwed up there. Or maybe they had to work around some stupid zoning law.

Posted by Steve Scott (Member # 630) on 09-30-2005, 01:23 PM:

I started off in the long hallway booths. At Muller's Lakeville, we had 18 machines stretched over roughly 430 feet. You could see completely down the hallway from either end, and thanks to the wash from the consoles it was quite easy to see what equipment was running. We were, really, the only location with such visual versatility; the other Muller hallway booths had protruding auditorium walls or tightly packed equipment which prevented a clear view. Concurrently, Lakeville was the only building without status panels.

It's a lot more isolated at St. Anthony, where the projectors are mostly on straight angles in booths behind each auditorium.

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 10-01-2005, 08:29 AM:

Dave: the "tight" relationship you describe is caused when architects copy each other's work. This error crept into stadium theatre designs; the projector is on the same elevation as the back row of seats.

Sometimes these concrete pads are poured in the booth with no regard to how much they weigh. I wonder often if the underlying floor is rated for the tonnage of all that 'crete. (Hopefully it is a hollow pour.) Louis

Posted by Robert E. Allen (Member # 1351) on 10-01-2005, 10:29 AM:

The ten screen Regal cinema (built in '99) where I worked was built that way. Six machines on one side and four on the other. It is as long as a football field. Every so often our GM (a really nice guy) would draw up a schedule without thinking about the manager/projectionists and scheduled machine one and machine seven (on opposite ends of the booth) to start at the same time. I decided that, since I would have a lot of trouble with a 40 yard dash, I was not going to do a 100 yard dash and got to the second machine as soon as a brisk walk would get me there.

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 10-01-2005, 11:18 AM:

quote:
scheduled machine one and machine seven (on opposite ends of the booth) to start at the same time. I... got to the second machine as soon as a brisk walk would get me there.

... which probably made you real popular when the start times got tattled to their noc, and the dm wanted to know why your shows weren't starting on time, eh?

Posted by Richard Fowler (Member # 893) on 10-01-2005, 12:26 PM:

Elevating a projection platform would usually happen on past projects in the largest rooms usually in an existing shell of a shopping center with roof restrictions. The overall deck for the booth was framed and attached per limitations of the building. In a couple of locations we had steel decking welded at each "problem" location which was much lighter than a concrete pour to stay within floor loading situations.
The first large multiplex I did ( eight screens in 1978 ) was a 210 foot long ( 64 meter )room with one operator who used roller skates [Smile]

Posted by Andy Summers (Member # 3207) on 10-01-2005, 03:55 PM:

Burce’

I like that a pool table, or chess even and while your deciding on making your move with the other projectionist the audience shout up to the booth come on roll the film. LOL
[Smile]

Posted by Robert E. Allen (Member # 1351) on 10-02-2005, 01:32 AM:

quote: Jack Ondracek
... which probably made you real popular when the start times got tattled to their noc, and the dm wanted to know why your shows weren't starting on time, eh?

Actually Jack there were only a couple of complaints while I was there and they were about films being started too early (and that happened when the "Twenty" failed to play.

I was actually able to make it from one end of the booth to the other within the 45 seconds allowed by Regal.

Posted by Jarryd Beard (Member # 2543) on 10-02-2005, 05:10 PM:

quote: Aaron Mehocic
Perhaps if Jarryd Beard is lurking out there he can catch us up to speed on things.

The Maxi Saver 12 is still around. I was only there once, however. Watching Matrix 3, the print was spiked. Talking to the manager (really nice guy, forget his name), I was told the print wasn't first run from either of the Carmikes in the area(Carmike 10 or Galleria 6), but rather from Cinemagic Squirrel Hill. No presentation problems from the theatre itself were noted. I believe the Waterworks is still around. There are ads in the Post-Gazette.

PS: Upon receiving "Four Brothers" second run from Cinemagic Squirrel Hill a month or so back, I've lost all respect. The print was badly scratched, "spliced" with masking tape after each reel filled (disregarding the original opaque splice used during makeup), leaving an entire empty reel in the can. One of the splices jammed in the gate upon our projectionist's screening. Lucky, the theatre I'm now working at was in such a state of neglect at the time, the over three year old 1600W bulb never melted the film. I'm glad to say, since my manager and I have been there, all bulbs were replaced/rotated as needed, a new spare in reserve.
[fu]

Cinemagic